


A Burnt Out Match And A Puddle On The Floor

by Bobbadopolous



Category: Emmerdale, robron
Genre: Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 12:26:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12606596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bobbadopolous/pseuds/Bobbadopolous
Summary: A look at Robert and what motivates him.I am so confused about some of the character choices being made with Robert and I just wanted to go back and try to draw a line through his past behavior in search of some continuity.  As such it's a bit of a waffle.





	A Burnt Out Match And A Puddle On The Floor

In a lot of ways they were each other’s opposite but when it came to their Achilles’ heel they were one and the same. The paths they’d walked through their lives, though vastly different, had led to them feeling innately unworthy of love.

For Robert this had meant a life of charades. Optical illusions and sleight of hand manoeuvres all perfectly designed to make sure people only ever saw what he wanted them to.  
A different character for every situation, some designed to be liked, others to be loathed and some merely to serve a single night’s purpose but none of them truly him. In this way no one could ever disapprove of him or be disappointed by him because no one really knew him.

Of course the downfall of that kind of life is that eventually even you don’t remember who you’re meant to be when the show ends and you can never be entirely sure you’re ‘true’ identity isn’t just another character designed to con yourself.

Aaron on the other hand was as transparent as well washed glass. Every single emotion he felt, miniscule or momentous, played across his face for anyone to see. He couldn’t even hide it when he tried, not that tried that hard.   
What was the point? If people couldn’t love him for him, and he couldn’t blame them for that, he didn’t need some weak imitation, he was better off on his own. In fact, he was convinced it was better for everyone.

Aaron had always felt that he had a monster in his gut that even he couldn’t love and certainly didn’t trust and he continued to push people away to protect them from its violence. 

Robert on the other hand had always felt that he was the monster and that his many faces merely enabled him to hide among the normal, happy people.   
And those faces had served him well. They’d gotten him good jobs, comfortable surroundings, fast cars and passionate hook-ups. He’d thought they’d even brought him happiness from time to time or rather acquired him the things that should’ve made him happy had he been a person capable of happiness.

In reality Robert didn’t really know what happiness was. He knew the thrill of the chase, that feeling of success that accompanied a particularly fruitful manipulation but beyond that, when he was stood there at the finish line with his prize, there was no prolonged feeling of contentment just emptiness that he hoped his next mark would fill.

Aaron too didn’t have a great track record with the light-hearted side of life. His formative years had been spent just trying to survive. Happiness had been a virtual stranger to him for so long that naturally later in life when he’d had the opportunity to choose happiness over misery he’d tended to stick with the devil he knew as opposed to opening himself up to an even greater fall. 

Two perpetually miserable people seemingly incapable of change, that was until their paths crossed.

Of course it had started with Robert putting on a face, the ‘big man on campus’ face that let Aaron know that Robert was a man who was universally desired and got what he wanted, and (for a short time only) that could be Aaron. It was one of Robert’s favourites because it immediately put the other person on the back foot, feeling like they wanted Robert more than Robert wanted them. It tended to make them very amenable to one and done encounters in the bedroom.

Robert had affixed the face and adopted the swagger but standing there under the appraising gaze of the blue eyed mechanic, for the first time in a long time, Robert had felt the mask slip.   
While he’d moved fast to replace it he couldn’t help feeling that, just for a moment, Aaron had seen the monster. Of course Robert hadn’t realised at the time that Aaron had a monster of his own and that maybe, just maybe, that look of uncertainty on his face hadn’t been a man seeing a monster but a man seeing a reflection.

The idea that someone could see the ugliness that was Robert at his core and not turn away was a completely foreign concept to the businessman. The thought that there might one day be someone who Robert didn’t have to wear a mask with, that there might actually come a day when the masks would be gone completely and he could live openly as the ‘monster’ had never occurred to him until the moment Aaron had ‘seen’ him.

He had been afraid of what it had meant, he had been afraid to allow himself to want something genuine and after decades of every day being a masquerade he was just so damned afraid of giving up his faces. 

So he hadn’t at first, he’d still worn the masks for the world at large but occasionally he’d let them slip with Aaron. He supposed he was testing the waters, trying to figure out if there was any ‘genuine’ Robert left and if there was, if it would be enough to build a whole person upon. Not to mention the fact that giving up the masks meant giving up control. He liked to be the one pulling the strings, he liked never being vulnerable and stripping away the faces meant opening himself up to true and honest rejection.

While he was testing himself he was also learning about Aaron. He’d even met Aaron’s monster once or twice when he’d pissed him off but rather than being repulsed by it Robert was drawn to Aaron’s raw-nerve quality. Aaron was always so open, even when he was trying not to be. If there was something his words weren’t telling you his face soon would be. He was too easy to manipulate, too easy to hurt and to Robert’s great and lasting shame, he had done both.

There they had been, one man a glacier so numb from the cold that he was incapable of feeling anything and the other man a naked flame, forever threatening to light the very ground beneath his feet.   
Was it inevitable then that they would destroy each other? The flame destined to melt the ice, the melting ice destined to smother the flame.

That’s what Robert had told himself the first time Aaron had left him. That there wasn’t anything to be done, that they were innately incompatible. It had been just another lie from just another false face. A face that was telling him he was better off on his own and that he’d dodged a bullet (not literally as it happened).   
As far as Robert’s myriad of personas went, that one had been particularly unconvincing. So he tried another and another until all he could do was admit that the only genuine thing about himself was the way he felt about Aaron. That had been the first time he’d really unabashedly allowed himself to want something real, to actually contemplate something akin to happiness but it all lay with Aaron. Without him he was his usual empty self, only without the will to conjure up another illusion.

The idea of Aaron became like a drug, he had to believe he could make it happen just to get through the day. He resisted the temptation to slip on another mask, one he knew Aaron would like. A mask that would hide the parts of him that were particularly unlovable. Aaron had a big heart, he wanted to believe, and he was very lonely. Robert was sure he could convince Aaron the new and improved Robert was legit but for the first time he didn’t want to take the shortcut. 

For the first time he was standing like Aaron saying ‘this is me, it’s ugly and inconvenient but please love me anyway’. He would never be satisfied having Aaron’s love with the caveat that he’d misappropriated it through manipulation.

So he’d tried to be a friend, a frustratingly fruitless exercise that saw Aaron put up more walls than a master builder. He hung back in the crowd, let Aaron have his space but never disappeared, never stopped watching or caring.  
That’s why he was the one that saw Aaron fall apart.

He’d caught him though just before the drop proved fatal. He’d helped him back onto that metaphorical ledge that Aaron seemed to live on. He couldn’t say that it was a completely selfless act, after all he was unwilling to live in an Aaron-less world but for the first time since he’d been a small child Robert expected nothing in return. 

It would’ve been easy to kiss Aaron on the park bench the day they’d visited Sandra. He’d wanted to…oh how he’d wanted to. But it had felt too close to a manipulation, to being Robert pivoting Aaron’s despair into desire for his own personal gain.

Once again he found that he didn’t just want Aaron but that he wanted Aaron to want him knowing of and accepting his admittedly long list of flaws. Aaron couldn’t make that choice while his vision was so clouded by pain.

That pain had eased with time and justice being served and so when Aaron had made a second advance Robert had finally felt he could accept it. Kissing Aaron had felt like coming home and he never wanted to leave again.

He had planned to be truthful from that day on, and he was (mostly) with Aaron at least. But old habits die hard and while he felt comfortable being himself with Aaron he wasn’t ready for the rest of the village to see the monster and certainly wasn’t ready to be vulnerable to all and sundry. So out had come the box of faces again. One for Aaron’s family when he had to pretend that living with a house full of Dingles and one Flaherty wasn’t completely killing the mood, one for the good folk of Emmerdale Aaron wanted him to get along with and one for the Whites so that they never knew how close he was to destroying them.

While he never wore false faces with Aaron, Aaron did see them slide on and off and it made him wary. Aaron had had a lot of people in his life he should’ve been able to trust take advantage of his open nature, Robert having been one of them. As a person prone to the occasional bout of paranoia (well justified or not) it was wearing, having to constantly consider the many changing faces of his Robert Sugden.

Then the Andy situation had happened. If the re-emergence of the faces had been the snow starting to fall on their relationship Robert’s vendetta was an oncoming avalanche.

Rebecca had arrived and Robert had a mask especially picked out for her. It was flirty and fun and of course ‘genuinely’ concerned for her wellbeing. He had trusted that Aaron would see it for the charade it was and he had in the beginning but that’s not where Aaron’s concerns ended, in fact it was where they began.

He watched as Robert invited a fairly blameless woman into town under the false pretence that there was still a spark between them, pitted her against members of her family and prepared to cut and run if it went south. Perhaps if he’d seen Robert conflicted about his actions, maybe if had felt some level of guilt coming of him… but he didn’t. He was constantly reminded how easily Robert slipped in and out of character and he couldn’t help but wonder if he was even capable of the love he professed to have for Aaron or if it was just another elaborate charade.

Once those doubts had crept in there really wasn’t any shutting them out. They just wormed their way deeper and festered there. 

If Robert had been paying attention, if he hadn’t been so myopically focused on the Whites, if he’d had a greater understanding of what it meant to be loved, in the first place… but he didn’t. He didn’t see it until it was too late and Aaron was falling again.

For the first time since he’d made that vow never to deceive Aaron, Robert slipped on a mask for his fiancé. Done with the best of intentions and in an hour of great need he had held Aaron and told him everything was going to be okay. Truthfully it had been as much for his benefit as Aaron’s. He’d needed to believe it was going to be okay too, that prison was not going to be the end of them.  
Robert could claim that in the end it had been prison that did them in but it would be another lie that served no one but himself. To compare Aaron’s spice use to his sleeping with Rebecca was a false equivalence and he knew it. 

But it had been so easy to slide on the face of a person who didn’t care, to pretend for a night. Robert remembered back to the pre Aaron days when he’d essentially been impervious to the harm others caused, when he took what he wanted and apologised to no one.  
Then the morning had come and the face lay with several empty liquor bottles on the bedroom floor, leaving Robert naked (in more ways than one) and despairing.

He knew then that it would be their end, a burnt out match and a puddle on the floor.

…

It had taken a while but Aaron had left, he couldn’t blame him if he could find a way to get away from himself he’d probably take it.

Now Robert flits from mask to mask one for Lawrence, one for Chrissie, One for Rebecca, for Vic, for Diane, one for the people in the pub, for Jimmie and Nicola at work. He should have trouble keeping track of them all but he doesn’t. It’s like riding a bike. But there’s still one person he won’t put a mask on for. He keeps hoping that one day that person will look up and see him, just him and love him anyway.


End file.
